{"id":1571,"date":"2005-06-15T22:37:44","date_gmt":"2005-06-16T02:37:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinemacrazed.wordpress.com\/?p=1571"},"modified":"2005-06-15T22:37:44","modified_gmt":"2005-06-16T02:37:44","slug":"before-sunset-2004","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2005\/06\/15\/before-sunset-2004\/","title":{"rendered":"Before Sunset (2004)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"VQJBy7n\"<\/a>It’s like they never left us. It really is. It’s as rare as a meteor to watch an engrossing romance that’s also very intellectually stimulating, but wouldn’t you know it, with Richard Linklater once again taking reigns of his film, you get what you expect, and I ultimately got what I expected, a fascinating, charming, and beautifully written romance drama starring two people who just have incomparable chemistry. All my fears were put to rest thirty minutes within the film as that magnetic chemistry between Delpy and Hawke becomes all the more volatile on-screen two fold. They have it here, and it works so well, I was just breath taken. This is a movie that could have easily been mishandled, and botched, but it ultimately works so well as a standalone and as a sequel. Only Linklater could commit such a feat.<\/p>\n

We meet Jesse and Celine yet again as they’ve managed to grown from their last rendezvous ten years earlier. They’ve grown as people for the better and for the worse. Jesse is now a best selling author and Celine is a traveling environmentalist. I loved “Before Sunrise” as you can see by my review above on the listing, and I had a lot of high hopes for the sequel in spite of my utter disappointment Linklater would even do a sequel. Linklater however, where he disappointed me, more than made up for it with a movie that is just so engrossing, entertaining, and intellectually stimulating. Only Linklater could make a romance that doesn’t adhere to clich\u00e9s and conventions, nor does it give the presence of romance manipulating its audience expecting us to care about these people. But we do, we really do. These are not big stars we’re watching, this isn’t a vehicle, deep down we can see this is a work of love. These are two strangers who have been adrift in their lives and suddenly drift back together and discover they’re more connected than they dare to think. But there’s the character development; the ironic character development Linklater achieves for his audience.<\/p>\n

Jesse and Celine, we find, have switched roles. As Jesse and Celine continue their conversation, as if they’d remembered after ten years where they’d left off, Now Jesse’s the wide-eyed idealist, and Celine is the cynic. It’s such brilliant role reversal only achievable by Linklater who reverses roles to attribute more obstacles. The characters here have become more layered, more defined in their own personas, and they’ve matured. Whether or not either one appreciates their transformation is for you to see for yourself, but surprises do arise. Delpy, who I never really got in to as an actress, and always found her media boasting as a beauty overblown, looks shockingly beautiful this time around and presents a very resonant glow on the screen. Hawke looks comfortable in his role of Jesse as he was in the first film. He presents dialogue and timing with fierce precision and believability.<\/p>\n

Both of whom bear the utter charisma of their characters while committing to the excellent natural dialogue. Their conversations are scattered, hasty, and overlapped, along with constant interruptions from one another, it’s a niche Linklater uses to his disposal so well putting it on showcase for the audience. The dialogue still works as it did in the electric and engrossing original film and their interplay is just magnetic. It’s hard to take your eyes off them as you wonder what will become of their second meeting. There’s a sense of immediacy and urgency between the meeting of these two characters that is present without resorting to gimmickry. Had this been milked, there’d have been a clock present on the screen the entire movie. Could you imagine such a hokey gimmick? Regardless, the film thrives on beauty with not only great character emphases, but beautiful scenery of Paris present as the two walk around conversing. Paris has never looked so stunning.<\/p>\n

“Before Sunset” is engrossing, even more so than any blockbuster can ever hope to be, and Linklater gives us such a charming ending that is both a happy ending and leaves a question mark for the audience.\u00a0 The irony of the opening is Hawke’s character explaining in a stunning monologue how his book left off with a question mark ending, but the sad thing is, this sequel ruins the brilliant question mark ending from the original movie. The original film’s last moments had me wondering if they would or wouldn’t meet up with one another, and this movie ruins it by explaining what happened, and it’s sad because I was left wondering for days and Linklater just explains it to us never leaving it to the audience to decide whether they rendezvoused or not. The film takes away the mystery the first film held so true, and Linklater ends up eating his own tail. I was disappointed that Linklater ruined the mystery of the first film’s ending, but he redeems himself with a superior sequel that is both well acted, very well written, well told, and bears yet another ending that will keep audiences wondering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s like they never left us. It really is. It’s as rare as a meteor to watch an engrossing romance that’s also very intellectually stimulating, but wouldn’t you know it, with Richard Linklater once again taking reigns of his film, you get what you expect, and I ultimately got what I expected, a fascinating, charming, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[71,120,302,637,846,874,922],"class_list":["post-1571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adventure","tag-b","tag-drama","tag-masterpiece","tag-richard-linklater","tag-romance","tag-sequel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1571\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}